Teaching

NONPROFIT MARKETING: MKTG 491N 

This course is designed to introduce students to both the theory and the practice of nonprofit marketing. As a result, students will be introduced to philanthropy and the communication, marketing, and fundraising practices of nonprofit organizations. Early semester work will include a survey of the historical and political context in which the nonprofit sector emerged and its crucial role in shaping American society. Building on this knowledge, the course will explore the communication strategies modern nonprofits use to mobilize supporters, change public opinion, and advance long-term solutions to the problems they seek to address.

CONSUMER BEHAVIOR: MKTG 3553 

The goal of this course is to enhance your understanding of consumer behavior. By the end of the course, you will be knowledgeable about consumer psychology—you will understand how to meet customers’ needs, and how and why consumers make purchasing decisions. During this process, you will come to better understand yourself as a target of marketing influence. You will also appreciate how an understanding of consumer psychology can be used to develop powerful marketing techniques and tactics. Additionally, we are going to talk about race. It will not merely be a block within the schedule, rather it will be submerged in various topics throughout the semester and will be a critical component of your semester long project.

MARKETING DATA ANALYTICS: WCOB 1033

The broad objective of this course is to help you develop as critical thinkers and systematic problem solvers. The main job of managers is to make decisions, and to do this effectively you need critical thinking skills. In practical terms, this means that you need to learn to solve real-world problems by accurately framing them in terms of independent and dependent variables, formulating hypotheses about those variables, using statistics to test hypotheses, and interpreting the results. In short, I hope to instill in you an appreciation for the role of data in managerial problem solving by knowing both how to produce it (i.e., research design) and how to display and analyze it (i.e., statistics). The only way to learn critical thinking skills is by practicing them, so we will use a hands-on approach using Excel and a focus on applied business problems.

PHILOSOPHY

Goals: I want my students to cultivate critical thinking skills and information search methods, which I found valuable in my own professional career, so they feel confident in their professional careers. Specifically, I want my students to feel ready to contribute in meetings, projects, and daily work activities, and to feel their contributions are both meaningful and impactful because they have thought through agenda action items and the implications of desired changes or project outcomes. I also want my students to get excited about tackling problems and joining teams to work on projects. Lastly, I want to foster class discussions, collaborative learning, and personal reflection so my students understand and value both the benefits and challenges of collaborating and working with others, and taking time to pause and reflect on lessons learned.

Beliefs: It is my belief that to learn, students must be actively engaged with the material. Simply put, students must do something. Additionally, I believe that if you provide students with content that is relevant and applicable to their current lives, they will be engaged both in and outside of the classroom.

Approach: Considering such goals and beliefs, I like to think of secondary education as an exploratory residency where students balance learning with doing to gain a better understanding of their capabilities while developing career aspirations that align not only with their professional, but also personal interests, as well as skills that they can use for years to come.

Ultimately, I want my students to feel capable and empowered to contribute to the firms they choose to work for right from day one. Grades in my class are reflective of both lessons learned as well as effort executed to meet class objectives. Those who excel do so because they are ready to reach their potential in the non-academic world.